Education + Tech

Education & Tech, was created to build hope that education based on social technologies, can transform the new century, and enable abundance not only spiritually but economically. Milton Ramirez, Ed.D. - @tonnet is the founder & editor. He is a teacher, tech blogger, writes on education, and hails this blog from Union, NJ. For further questions, tips or concerns please e-mail him to:miltonramirez [at] educationandtech [dot] com

Teacher + Scholar

If you are a regular to Blog Education & Tech, you shall remember that I am a blogger and I'd written a post about education almost everyday since 2003. Education & Tech provides you with education news, expert tech advice, classroom management ideas, and social media tools for educators, administrators, parents and k-12 students.

Teachers across America are losing their tenure—at least, in the
traditional sense. For years, the term applied to educators whose
seniority essentially made them insusceptible to lay-offs. However,
several states are tossing out the old ways in exchange for a new
tenure system determined by overall classroom performance, rather
than years spent at a single institution.

According to one of the resources for top online PhD programs,
tenure as Americans knew it had been around since the early
20th century. In addition, statistics from the Center for American
Progress indicate that, until very recently, the majority of states
(33) granted tenure after three years at the same school. The 17
others awarded tenure at various intervals between the first and
fifth year. Notably, every state had a system in place, and virtually
all of them automatically awarded tenure when the benchmark year
was reached.

Now, a handful of states are leading the charge for tenure reform.
Most proponents argue that the old tenure system is antiquated,
and allows ineffective teachers (or worse) access to the nation’s
children. Florida has pursued the issue most aggressively,
essentially nullifying all potential tenure opportunities for new
teachers and laying out a plan to dismiss any teacher with multiple
poor evaluations. Other states, such as Colorado and Nevada, also
support the practice of laying off teachers with mediocre ratings,
while Rhode Island allows up to two years of poor performance
before dismissal is required. In all, 11 states now mandate school
districts to consider job performance when deciding which teachers
to retain the following year, and about half of all states grade
educators on classroom effectiveness.

Last month, The Huffington Post reported that teacher unions
nationwide began to fight the new changes. Opponents argue these
reforms unnecessarily target older teachers by denying them “due
process.” However, many experts believe the recent shift is merely
an initial step toward complete reconstruction. “Tenure laws will
be under assault for many years to come," said Marjorie Murphy, a
history professor at Swarthmore College who penned a book about
the teacher labor movement titled Blackboard Unions: The Aft and
the Nea, 1900-1980.

Many believe the legislative changes are a reaction to soaring rates
of school attendance in the United States. As Los Angeles Mayor
Antonio Villaraigosa, a proponent of the reforms, told NPR, many
urban school districts face large-scale issues in the face of crowded
classrooms. "I believe this issue of education is the democracy
issue of our time, the economic issue of our time and the civil
rights issue of our time when you look at the achievement gap," he
said. "And you look at the fact that in urban schools, you have a 50
percent dropout rate. And 80 percent of the kids are scoring at the
bottom 20 percentile. We should be working together."

The Obama Administration has made a major push for charter
schools—but these privately managed learning institutions also
play a key role in the tenure debate. As they announce plans to
strip teachers of tenure rights, states like Florida and New Jersey
are awarding grant monies to developers whose charter schools
have proven to be successful. Since they are independently owned,
these establishments base their teacher contracts and subsequent
extensions on overall classroom performance, not seniority.

To appease critics, Deseret News reports that several organizations that favor the new tenure system are creating complex models that
eliminate the “black and white” appearance of the reforms. The
Gates Foundation, for example, suggests a "value-added model"
that establishes a baseline level for each student at the outset of
each school year. This way, teacher scores are based on annual
progress, not overall achievement.

How remaining states choose to address the issue and reform
traditional tenure will play out in the coming months. Many
believe that effective education for children should take ultimate
precedence in this debate. As many legislators have seen, however,
several factors are critical to the development of a performance-
based teacher merit system—and all of them lie at the heart of this
complex debate.

(*) Brittany Lyons aspires to be a psychology professor, but decided to
take some time off from grad school to help people learn to navigate the
academic lifestyle. She currently lives in Spokane, Washington, where she
spends her time reading science fiction and walking her dog.